German eVTOL developer Lilium is facing another financial crisis as the company struggles to secure a critical funding package that was expected to stabilise its operations, Zag Daily reported. After announcing a €200 million rescue deal on Christmas Eve, Lilium has so far received only a fraction of the promised funds, leaving it unable to pay salaries and forcing it to suspend operations. With time running out, the company may be forced to file for insolvency if the remaining investment does not materialise.

British utility Thames Water lodged an appeal to the country's competition regulator on Friday, beginning a process to try to raise the prices it can charge customers for the next five years and improve its chances of survival, Reuters reported. Thames Water is waiting to hear whether the courts will approve a 3 billion pound ($3.77 billion) rescue deal to ward off nationalisation in the short term and give it time to deal with its financial problems, including debt of 18 billion pounds. Its future viability also depends on how much it can charge customers.

President Donald Trump on Thursday said he planned to impose tariffs on Canada and France over their digital services taxes on U.S. technology giants, which has been a long-standing irritant, Reuters reported. Canada, seeking to address the challenge of taxing digital giants like Google parent Alphabet and Amazon.com that can book their profits in low-tax countries, began imposing the tax in June last year. Trump tasked his economics team on Thursday with devising a plan to impose reciprocal tariffs on every country that levied duties on U.S. imports.

The eurozone economy grew a little in the final months of last year, a rosier reading than the stagnation previously estimated, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product increased 0.1% between September and December from the previous quarter, EU statistics agency Eurostat said Friday in new estimates for the currency area. Eurostat had previously said GDP was flat over the quarter. The weak growth isn’t a sign of robust health in the eurozone economy, however.

The U.K.’s competition regulator plans to speed up its reviews of large deals in response to pressure to help boost the country’s economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. “We know speed of decision making is vital to reduce uncertainty and costs for businesses,” Sarah Cardell, the Competition and Markets Authority’s chief executive, said in a blog post Thursday. She noted the vast majority of deals reviewed by the CMA end up getting cleared. “We must move as quickly as possible to get to the right decisions,” she said.

Germany faces major labour disputes in 2025, as an established bond between firms and workers -- long seen as a pillar of the country's economic success -- is starting to unravel in the wake of brutal competition, economic weakness and spiralling costs, Reuters reported. Labour bosses at industrial giants Bosch, Thyssenkrupp Friedrichshafen and Volkswagen - jointly representing more than half a million German workers - say that firms are showing a new level of determination to cut jobs, close factories and move staff abroad.

Telecom Italia SpA has hired UniCredit SpA to help evaluate its options as suitors circle the former Italian phone monopoly, Bloomberg News reported. Advisers at Italy’s second-largest bank will work with Telecom Italia to review scenarios that could increase its value in an approach. Billionaire Xavier Niel and buyout firm CVC Capital Partners Plc are separately exploring deals for Telecom Italia that could pave the way for its eventual combination with the local unit of Niel’s Iliad SA, Bloomberg reported last week.